Designs revealed for Future Campus: University College Dublin

University College Dublin’s Future Campus project focuses on enlivening and enhancing the University’s extensive campus, creating a highly-visible and welcoming entrance precinct, as well as a charismatic new architectural addition, the Centre for Creative Design.

Ninety-eight teams from 28 countries entered the first stage of the competition, and a shortlist of six teams were selected by a panel chaired by University College Dublin President Professor Andrew J. Deeks. The shortlisted teams were asked to prepare urban design visions for the Entrance Precinct Masterplan as well as concept designs for the Centre for Creative Design. The jury will meet in July 2018 to interview the shortlist and select the winner, who is expected to be announced in August 2018.

A Marketplace of Innovation

As learning transitions into a flexible engagement and communal endeavour, UNStudio’s vision for UCD’s Future Campus thoughtfully transforms the Entrance Precinct into the ‘Marketplace of Innovation’. By reimagining the Future Campus as a vibrant marketplace, programmed with a series of agile spaces that form into cultural and commercial destinations around the Estates, the campus becomes a green space of engagement that invites students, faculty and Dubliners to learn, collaborate and co-create.

The Centre of Creative Design orients itself at a critical intersection within the Marketplace of Innovation. Located near the campus entrance, this elevated building acts as a conduit for orientation, as it becomes the new origin for many of the primary routes. The flexible platform for the CCD – and by extension the Marketplace for Innovation – is a kick-starter for connectedness; it fosters serendipitous knowledge sharing and engenders a culture of engagement within UCD’s community. With its volume gesturing both outwards and upwards and with its lively interior on display for broader Dublin, the CCD truly becomes the heart of the Future Campus.